fredburgessblog

i used to host a radio show for a community radio station that ran from 2 to 6 a.m. on thursday nights, playing music until the sun came up. i took it on faith that somebody was listening. this blog may be a bit like that, because, goddamnit, i'll play some music.

Monday, September 05, 2005

What Type of Person You Are

Bad recordings are better. Not the stock answer tomusic-listening you generally hear, but in many cases, itcan’t be denied: a poor recording is simply more evocative ofwhat the musician is trying to get across. This has everything to do with the alt. country aesthetic.

Some find dirt roads more pure than expressways, and smalltimerecord labels and low sales stand in defiance of recordindustry conglomerates. At the same time, vinyl enthusiastsspeak of the warm, soft feel of their record player, asopposed to the cold, crisp, and digital sound of a CD -- eventhough it literally equals more crackles and muffled sound.

It depends on what type of person you are: if you prefer thedirt road sensibility, you likely hold an affinity towardsyour record player, and so on. Music is a profession ofaesthetics, but consesus has it that how you align yourselfwithin the musical world has strong implications about how youinterpret reality.

It makes no difference really. We tend to forget: realityoften has no place in the music realm. The alt. countryaesthetic -- perhaps more than any other genre of music -- issimply not real. As David Berman of the Silver Jews put it,“It’s really a fetishization of Depression-era country life.”Taking alt. country too seriously is like reading too muchKerouac: it’s helpful in shaping one’s sense of self butnearly impossible to put to practical use.

Even so, music exists to evoke any number of things (eras andstyles of life withstanding), and with this in mind, you don’thave to be taking a strong sociopolitical stance to admit thatpoor recordings are sometimes able to get the job done better.

Take Jose Gonzalez, for example. (After all that talk aboutpoor recordings and alt. country, this is really neither one,but any description of music is only an attempt to depict theaesthetic.) And one of the keys to Jose Gonzalez is thatrecording doesn’t matter. His guitar could be completely outof tune, and he’d still manage to make it sound good. Theacoustics of a room could be terrible; he’d play on. The roomand all of his listeners could vanish, and he’d sit in a fieldand create his own reality.

He's new and Swedish, with a Spanish-sounding name, andhe's slightly Iron & Wine folk-like -- but that doesn't mattereither.

All of the questions about music aren’t really questions;they’re just the smalltalk of intermission, as we wait forsomeone like Jose Gonzalez to come along and show us how lifecan sound.